Talk:Mary Beard

The other historian Mary Beard

   There's no doubt they are different people, just from their vital stats: iirc, their years alive don't even overlap, and the earlier one would presumably have to have passed the surname via a chain of male Beards, constituting one or more generations, one of whom immigrated ("back") to the UK. And both are historians, consciously concerned about the status of women, and married to academics in history. Anyone who expects a genetic (or adoptive) relationship is foolish, but it sure would be nice to have a (not necessarily bibliographic) note tracing the Brit, via a chain of male Beards, back to one who was a contemporary of Charles A. Beard, but not closely related to him by "blood."
--Jerzy•t 04:10, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

This comment appears to be referring to Mary Ritter Beard (August 5, 1876 – August 14, 1958). She was born Mary Ritter, to parents without Wikipedia articles, and married Charles Beard. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 10:04, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Am a bit freaked out by the chain of male beards. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:50, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

I was initially confused as to what relation Mary Beard had to Charles A. Beard, knowing his wife was a co-author of some of his work. Turns out there isn’t any, or none I can see. It might be worth a note at the top indicating “not to be confused with Mary Ritter Beard.” I’m not competent to do so but it’s a sound idea. Sychonic (talk) 14:08, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Per WP:NOTAMB, there is probably no need for a hatnote here. Mary Beard is already a disambiguation page which points to Mary Ritter Beard, and MRB was not a classicist, so anyone arriving at Mary Beard (classicist) rather than Mary Beard can be presumed to be in the right place. The only redirect is currently from Winifred Mary Beard, which is equally precise. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 14:18, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

(e/c) Have added, as they are both academics. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:19, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

new Gaurdian profile

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/30/mary-beard-the-cult-of

This was interesting. I didn't know about her before. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 10:32, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Gopal's View is irrelevant. Change my mind

Gopal is a relatively minor academic, and her opinion is irrelevant in comparison to Mary Beard's notoriety. Are we just quoting any old Tom Dick or Mohammad these days? It's also terribly sourced! Sort it out. Call your selves encaeclopaedians?! This led to widespread criticism, in which Mary Beard was accused of racism.[68] Does this not suffice!? 2A00:1370:8113:6A50:8D69:3AD:E035:F0B5 (talk) 21:56, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Bibliography

I have commenced a tidy-up of the Bibliography section:

• Cite templates will be used where possible.
• I prefer capitalization and punctuation to follow the standard cataloguing rules in AACR2 and RDA, rather than "title case".
• Links (either direct or indirect) to potentially unreliable or incomplete digitised copies and to booksellers (including Wikipedia's ISBN links) may be removed.
• A "Critical studies and reviews" section may be created instead of using inline references to reviews of the author's work.

This is a work in progress; feel free to continue. Sunwin1960 (talk) 05:07, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

@Sunwin1960 taking into account WP:CITEVARNO I've no intention of updating the bibliography citations as they stand because your style is consistent and complete. However, I am curious, given your stated intention to use cite templates if possible, why you went with the bare citation style? Duncnbiscuit (talk) 10:48, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. but I'm not sure what you mean by "bare citation style". Sunwin1960 (talk) 11:09, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

@Sunwin1960 like having a bare URL external link instead of cite web, I use bare to describe hand crafted bok citations rather than using cite book. The 'bare ' citation is much harder to keep constant and error free. with the cite book template enforcing consistency and making it easier to trap gaps; especially if you run tools like citation bot, which I note you disabled its access for this section. Duncnbiscuit (talk) 11:16, 30 January 2026 (UTC)